But It's a Good Refrain
by winter machine
Summary: Various stories in the Grey's/PP universe, based on a series of prompts.  Each chapter is a separate piece; the individual chapters contain character, setting and rating information.  Updated!
1. The Scream

**Prompt: Amelia in her addict days but still living at home.**

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><p><strong>The Scream<strong>

Two pills were sleep. Four pills were better than sleep. Six pills were even better than that. It took fourteen pills for anyone to notice.

"You still taking the Percocet, Ma?"

"Not for months." She taps Mark affectionately with a bright yellow oven mitt. "I can hardly feel it now, except when it rains."

Behind Amelia's eyes it's brighter than the oven mitt. Inside her head it's always raining.

"Amy-"

But she's not Amy anymore.

"Amy, have you seen where-"

"I didn't do anything!" she snaps, rigid with anxiety. The kitchen pulses around her, too warm.

"I just wondered if you'd seen the red serving dish. The one from Grandma McCoy that we use for the stuffing - didn't you wash it last night?"

She shakes her head, sweating.

"I washed it." Her sister-in-law, cool voiced, always, fixing her with a curious stare. "I put it in the pantry. Was that wrong?"

"It's fine," her mother sighs, put-upon, as Addison heads into the pantry to retrieve it.

Amelia holds onto the doorframe, watches Addison shrink a bit under her mother's critical gaze. It's funny, really. Addison hasn't done anything wrong. Not even a little. She's a model daughter-in-law, helpful, friendly - she used to drive Amelia wherever she wanted to go, back when she wanted to go places. She doesn't cook, but she cleans. She knows her mother doesn't like her though. Not really.

And then there's Amy - no, Amelia. Her mother likes _her_. She doesn't know about the pilfered pills from the medicine cabinet, or the ones her friend gave her. Or the ones from the man who-

"Ma?" Mark descends the stairs, an amber bottle in his fist. "There's nothing left. They're all gone."

The room is silent. Addison looks at Amelia, who swallows hard. She looks at her like she knows her, but she doesn't know her. No one does, not really. They might have known Amy, but Amy's gone. She left her crouching beneath the jewelry case in her father's store, tiny and crumpled and gagged so she couldn't scream, even when the wall behind her spattered red. Even when she wanted to scream.

Maybe she should scream now.

So she does: she screams. Just once, long and loud and that's all they hear until Addison's mouth falls open with realization, she drops the red serving dish with a clatter and shattered red pieces fly all over the kitchen.

Then she screams again and again until Mark grabs her, holds her as tight as Derek held Amy in the store, until she can't hear her voice.

They never let her scream.

But later that night she finds Derek's prescription pad, copies his handwriting meticulously, pockets sheet after sheet of it. She drives to the pharmacy three towns over and they hand her a neatly stapled paper bag in exchange for her lies. Huddled in the jeep again she tips two capsules into her hands and leans her head back, opening her mouth wide as a scream until the pills slide down her throat.

It's better than being sad.


	2. That Guy

**Prompt: Nancy's POV. Mark and the Shepherd family.**

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><p><strong>That Guy<strong>

The thing they all seemed to forget was that he was her father too.

Amy, the baby, she was there. Shocky, hospitalized for three days, fingerprint bruises around her jaw. Derek, the only boy, was there too. Icy hands, pale haunted eyes, never really told anyone what he saw. Sharon, the oldest, was the one who had to step up. Kathleen, the almost-shrink, talked about her feelings - everyone else's feelings too. And Nancy? She was just...there.

But he was her father too.

In the hospital, Amy rages. "You said we could get ice cream! You _said_," and she turns huge accusing eyes on everyone in the room.

"Amy, not now," Derek mutters, jaw set, fumbling miserably with his watch.

"Amy, it's okay to be sad," Kathleen cajoles, reaching for her small fingers, which are promptly yanked away.

"Amy, have a sip of juice instead," Sharon offers practically, folding a straw neatly into the little plastic cup.

They look at Nancy, leaning back against the wall, arms and legs folded.

"Amy, shut up," she says coolly and no sooner has her baby sister's mouth dropped into a little pink O of surprise than Nancy finds herself moving out the door and down the hall, a warm firm hand at her waist.

Mark.

She'd almost forgotten he was there.

He doesn't say anything, just walks along with his arm around her and she hunches into his side, letting him lead. They buy Amy an ice cream in the cafeteria and bring it back, Mark thrusting it into her hands before they cross the threshold.

"You give it to her," he says.

"Mark..."

But she does, a thin sticky stream of vanilla melting down her wrist. She licks it off as she passes the melting treat to Amy. She feels Mark's eyes on her. With her clean hand she gives Amy a pat on the head. She'll have to be nice to her now. They all will. She's a brat and she's already the youngest and everyone always remembers her, but now _this..._

Her mother is sitting by Amy's side, flanked by Sharon and Kathleen, whispering things on either side of her. Derek is studying the floor tiles intently. Mark rests a hand lightly on Nancy's shoulder.

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Why shouldn't she be? She wasn't there. There was no blood on her coat, no smudged blue gag around her mouth, screaming like a banshee carried into the ER and _poor Amy_, everyone would say. _She's just a baby._

Nancy's twenty-three. There's a year of medical school under her belt. She's engaged.

"Are you okay?" he asks again when they're standing in her parents' - her mother's - foyer. They've come home to get more clothes for Amy and it's quiet and dim and doesn't seem yet like everything's changed. Her father's slicker hangs obliviously from the coat tree by the door.

"Mark..."

"Nancypants..." The way he says it - sometimes like an elbow in the ribs. Tonight it feels more like a nudge.

"I'm engaged."

"I know," he says. Of course he knows. She touches the finger with the small round diamond. A starter, Theo called it. One day they'd be doctors and successful and he'd put a rock on her finger. And then everyone would know she was his.

"I'm older than you."

"I know," he says again. She's tired, or something so she leans into him, feeling spear-skinny against the broad expanse of his chest, the sturdy set of his hips.

"He was my father too," she says.

"I know." He murmurs it into her hair and then she's falling, falling like her father must have but there's no gun, no shot, just a circle of hard arms and the whisper of a scratchy jaw. He feels solid and real and like he knows she's there. She clings - which in itself is strange because she doesn't _cling_, that's for babies (like Amy) or touchy-feely girls (like Kathleen). She's softer under his hands though, not all bony angles and elbows and he cradles her with more gentleness than she would have though him capable of. He's her little brother's friend, too handsome for his own good, rakish, but his eyes are terribly sad under what she realizes, this close, are long eyelashes. Sandy-brown like his hair. And she realizes that he lost someone too.

He covers her body with his and it feels like being found. Like someone saw her - not in the corner of the room, not even Theo with his starter rings and his plans for _someday_, but someone who stood in a room with her whole family (loud, big, everywhere all at once demanding things, saying things) and looked at her.

It's slow and tender and she thinks no one would believe her if she told them.

So she doesn't.

**X**

No one ever asks, not for years and years until they do, and it's two decades later and they're laughing over margaritas and sisters. Amy - she won't call her Amelia - isn't there.

"You too?" Kathleen shrieks with mirth.

Nancy shrugs.

Kathleen rolls her eyes. "It _is _Mark. It's like - a right of passage. God, we were so drunk and it was so-" she breaks off, laughing again. "_Dirty," _she says finally. "That's Mark, though, right? Do it once, get it over with, check the box. All show and no feelings - he's _that_ guy."

"Right," Nancy lies, twisting the two gold bands on her left hand. The diamond, large and pear-shaped, twinkles faintly under the low bar lights. "Yeah, same for me."


	3. Until He Didn't

**Prompt at the bottom of the page. Reviews warmly welcomed. Is this format working for people? Let me know your thoughts.**

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><p><strong>Until He Didn't<strong>

She used to love the way Derek looked at her, back when he actually used to look at her. His pale eyes would twinkle with affection, crinkle up with a genuine smile.

He loved how smart she was - he would tell her that - her humor, and her spark. Until he didn't.

"I have to work," he would say, flashing her a quick smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Another time. I'll just see you at home."

She would try to apologize, try to explain, but he didn't want to hear it. "Not now," he would say and she would watch his back walk away, sometimes in a sweater or a puffy down jacket, sometimes in a white lab coat. "Not now, Amy."

**X**

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Addison asks. "When you saw us, that night, you kept the secret, and I never asked, but - why?"

"I guess I understood."

"Because it was Mark?"

"No." Amelia shakes her head, covers Addison's hand with her smaller one as they watch another wave crash onto the beach. "Because it was Derek."

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><p><strong>Prompt: Amelia's line on Private Practice: "I caught you with my brother's best friend and I kept your secret."<strong>


	4. Hen Night

**Prompt: Addison's "hen night" (that's bachelorette party for my countrymen/countrywomen); Amelia doesn't get to stay the whole time; Mark plays some sort of role.**

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><p><strong>Hen Night<strong>

She's allowed to go to dinner but not the part that comes after the dinner. That's what her mother ruled.

"What _is _the part that comes after the dinner?" she asks her sisters, one after the other, as they bustle around with armloads of supplies.

"Nothing you need to know at your age," Mary clucks.

"Why are you asking?" Kathleen probes.

"None of your business," Nancy snaps.

"Derek, what's-" but he cuts her off before she can get any further.

"Come on, Amy, I have a hundred things to do," he sighs. "And anyway, I'm not even invited."

"Why isn't Derek invited?" she asks Mark. He's changing a lightbulb in the TV room, which means he's a captive audience.

"No boys allowed," he shrugs, passing the old lightbulb down to her. "Here, hold this - with the dishtowel, Amy!"

She makes a face but cradles the lightbulb carefully in the thick cloth.

"Mom said I can go to the dinner part."

"Well," he says, screwing the bulb in with one last twist and giving Amy the first smile she's seen today. "Then I'll expect a full report from you afterwards."

The corners of her mouth tug north as she looks up at him. "Okay."

The second smile comes from someone else with whom she shares no blood.

"Don't look!" her sisters squeal as Addison pokes her head through the door. She laughs. "Sorry, sorry, I thought you were ready to go."

"Almost," Kathleen clarifies.

"I'll just go repair the damage from Derek's car." Addison pats her hair, which looks perfect to Amy. "Will you be ready then?"

"I'm ready," Amy steps forward, already in her blue parka. She's been ready for the last half an hour.

"Hey," Addison smiles down at her. She actually looks happy to see her. Amy considers asking her if she can stay for the part that comes after, but then Addison asks her if she wants to help her get ready. She agrees eagerly. She likes her almost-sister-in-law. She has shiny hair and is tall - taller even than Nancy, the tallest of the sisters. She told Amy once that she was smart. She said she always wanted a little sister.

Amy's not a baby, she's practically a teenager, but she knows that that might not be true. Still, it was a nice thing to say.

Addison sits on the vanity stool in the large guest bathroom and Amy watches her the way she always wanted to watch her sisters. But Mary said it wasted too much time and Kathleen didn't wear makeup and Nancy said she was just in the way. Amy watches Addison apply a thin coat of something pink and sticky. It doesn't look sticky on her lips, though, just shiny and glowing.

Addison turns to her. "Want a little?" Her smile is warm and conspiratorial.

"Mom said no makeup..." Amy's voice trails off. She doesn't want to sound like a baby.

Addison just smiles. "Another time, then."

"It smells good," Amy says tentatively. "Can I -"

Addison passes her the tiny black pot. It's got a shiny silver rim and initials in silver along the edge. Amy brings it to closer to her face. It smells delicious, like a whisper of something flowery and wet. A rainy garden.

"It's jasmine. White jasmine. You have good taste."

Amy beams at the compliment. Addison fixes her hair, then uses the brush to make Amy's hair look glossier and longer than it did before.

"Mom says I have to leave after the dinner part," Amy confides as she walks in step with Addison to join her sisters in the living room.

"Then we'll have to make sure the dinner part is the best part," Addison says simply.

**X**

It's pretty good. She's always relished being somewhere different, and this is nothing if not novelty. Her sisters make Addison wear a silly tinsel crown, and Addison's friends come too. Amy doesn't really know them, but she likes the restaurant, drinking shirley temples and stealing the occasional sip of champagne when no one's looking.

"Party crashers!" Someone squeals. They all sound a little sloshy around the edges of their voices. Probably from all the drinks.

"Hey, no boys allowed!"

"We're not staying." Derek leans over and gives Addison a kiss on the mouth. Amy looks away. "You taste like bachelorette," he laughs and Addison says "Not for long!"

Amy takes advantage of the distraction to swallow another sip of champagne before the glass is whisked out of her hand.

"Time's up, little sis." Mark grins at her. "We're here to liberate you from this henhouse."

"I want to stay!"

"Don't be a brat, Amy." Nancy rolls her eyes. Her hair is sticky-uppy on one side - not in the good way - which gives Amy a mean little glint of satisfaction.

"Can I stay a little longer?" she pleads, turning her face toward Mark. Before he can answer Mary and Derek respond in tandem with a resounding _no._

"No boys and no kids," Mary says firmly. "Sorry, Amy. Get your coat and get a move on."

Mark reaches his hand out to her, helps extricate her from the complicated seating arrangement. Addison gives her a good-bye kiss.

Derek's hand is on her shoulder, somewhere between a pat and a push. "Come on, Amy, I'm double parked."

"Later, ladies," Mark calls, taking up residence on her other side.

"Wait, Mark, you can stay," Nancy calls after him.

"What? I thought no boys were allowed." Derek's voice is pretend-sulky and Amy rolls her eyes. What's the point of getting married if you still have to do all that dumb flirty stuff? Sure enough, Derek is looking at Addison and kind of fake-pouting and Amy feels the chips and guacamole she gorged on earlier start to rise in her stomach.

"No grooms," Nancy correct and Addison's blond friend - Amy can't remember her name - nods vigorously.

"Mark's not a _boy_, he's practically family!" Kathleen explains.

"Plus we need a designated driver," Mary points out practically. "Kath, give Mark the keys to your car."

Mark turns on Derek and Amy with a mock-pleading expression, but it's not annoying when he does it. It's funny. "Take me with you, Derek. Amy, don't leave me here. Please."

Amy giggles and Derek rolls his eyes. "We're not going to win this one. Sorry, pal."

Derek takes her arm as they walk out. He talks to her the whole way home in the car and she drinks in the attention - no sisters, just her brother - but when they get home he gives her a little prod and says he's got a bunch of stuff to do. "Go to bed," he instructs and she pretends to, but then tiptoes down the stairs and out the front door.

Not far. Just to the porch, where she can swing and wait for the others to get back and find out what the part after the dinner was all about.

It's inky dark with stars out, past her bedtime - which she's really too old for anyway. Soft spring sounds lull her, crickets and rustling leaves, as she waits.

**X**

A gentle shake on her shoulder rouses her.

"Hey. You waited up all this time?"

She rubs her eyes, feeling tired and childish. She'd wanted to stay. Curled on the porch swing, at least she wasn't inside. She could still pretend she was part of the party. She shivers a little now, gooseflesh rising on her arms. It's not cold, but it's cooler than it was when they dropped her off.

Mark looks at her ruefully and gives her arms a little rub. "Here." He takes off his jacket and slips it over her shoulders before lifting her up. "Good thing they decided on a spring wedding."

"Was it fun, after I left?" she asks sleepily as Mark carries her inside and up the stairs. Her head feel heavy as she lolls against his shoulder.

"Yeah," his voice rumbles as he lowers her carefully onto her bed. "It was fun." His hands are warm as he tugs her shoes off and pulls the light blanket up to her waist. He smells of cigarette smoke, the honeyed scent of the drinks he and her brother both like, and something else that she can't quite identify.

He's already left, the sound of the heavy front door announcing his exit, when she recognizes the last note of his scent. Jasmine.


	5. Some Blue December

**_In the A/U world where Mark/Addison started a long, long time ago: Mark, after the wedding._**

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><p><strong>Some Blue December<strong>

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><p>He sees them off in their snow-dusted limousine, Amelia waving on her tiptoes until the car is out of sight. He has to stifle an urge to hail one of the many yellow cabs lingering outside the Plaza and shout <em>follow that car!<em> like in a goddamned movie. Like it would help. Amy shivers next to him, clutching the spray of rosebuds and lilies she carried down the aisle in one hand. A flash of crystal catches his eye.

"What's that you're drinking?" he asks her suspiciously and she just grins, lifting the champagne flute in a saucy toast. Jewelry that's really too old for her clanks on a delicate wrist.

"I don't think so." He plucks the flute from her hands and drains the liquid himself.

"I'm seventeen!" she protests, a cloud of warm breath in the frosty air.

"Exactly. You have the rest of your life to make bad decisions."

Amy's teeth are starting to chatter, her satin wrap no match for the wintry street. He leads her back inside with one last glance over his shoulder. The ballroom is steamy and crowded with white-coated staff still clearing away the excesses of the nuptials; he signals a lingering bartender and hands his surrogate sister a coke. "Here."

She wrinkles her nose. "That's not very festive."

Good. He doesn't feel very festive.

"Didn't Addie look beautiful?" Amelia's eyes are dreamy now, too familiar. He sees his best friend in those blue eyes, sees his own betrayal and his chest tightens.

"Yeah," he says shortly, looking away at the caterers clearing the elaborately draped tables. "She did." He tries to picture her in the frothy white lace and camera-ready smiles of that evening, instead of seeing her at his door, sobbing, the previous night.

_Please, I'll ruin my makeup if I cry anymore. Please say you understand. Please._

_I'm not going to make this easier for you_, he'd growled. Shut the door in her face, even though he knew perfectly well she had a key, had slipped it into her hand himself as easily as he passed a twenty to the maid who pretended not to see. He pressed a palm against the bevels of the door then, listened to her cry on the other side of it.

When he couldn't stand it anymore he yanked the door open and she fell into his arms, all tearful apologies and warm damp cheeks. He molded his hands to her, memorized the feel of her against him.

_This is the last time,_ she whispered, even when he said _we can't_. People were waiting downstairs. _We can't do this_, he said again, but they did it anyway, and he still felt the burn of her on his skin, the velvet warmth of her surrounding him when she flushed and nodded and smiled prettily at Derek's side barely an hour later. _To Addison and Derek!_ they toasted. He made a speech at the rehearsal dinner just as expected, swallowed self-loathing with his scotch when Derek clapped him gratefully on the back. Some best man.

_This is the last time._

The real last time, the other last time, was in his apartment, the bachelor pad she and Derek used to tease him about. Stark walls, bare couch. _This place needs a woman's touch,_ Derek would always joke. Addison would look away, blushing, Mark swallowing hard on guilt and fear and arousal, the heady combination he fought every time the three of them stood in a room together.

The real last time, he'd pressed her against the bare white wall, not even a picture frame to break up the blankness. _I don't want to hurt either of you_, she'd whimpered, so he compromised by hurting her instead, hoisting her leg just a little higher than comfortable, thrusting hard enough for pleasure to knock the border of pain. She stayed silent, jaw clenched, irises a bottomless blue in the low light, letting him. He was the one with tears in his eyes afterwards, shame and anger battling for control, and she stroked his hair with cool resigned fingers.

A woman's touch. _If he only knew._

He leaves Amy in the clucking hen circle of her sisters, finds a woman at the hotel bar. Jet black hair, ample curves, a head shorter than he is. He doesn't know if she attended the wedding and he doesn't care. It's not until he stumbles back to his room at dawn that he sees the note on his pillow. It's on creamy hotel cardstock in the familiar handwriting he'd recognize anywhere - just three words:

_I'm so sorry_

There's no one in the empty room to hear him, but he says it anyway. "I'm sorry too, Red."

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><p><strong>Title from <em>I Hear the Bells,<em> Mike Doughty**


	6. Four Times Amy Came Home

**The first in a few things I'll be posting - all attempts to break an annoying case of writer's block. This was my own prompt to myself, and each section is exactly 100 words. **

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><p><em>Four Times Amelia Came Home from the Hospital (And One Time she Didn't)<em>

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><p>1. Derek's mom carries her into the house and Derek's dad puts his arm around both of them. Maybe that's why Mark tried asking his parents for a little sister or brother: so they could all stand together like that - close. His mother laughed when he asked. Not a nice laugh. So he didn't ask again."Do you want to hold her?"Derek shakes his head, jamming his hands in his pockets, but Mark holds out his arms. The bundle feels warm against him. Smells like sour milk and talcum powder. "Careful," Derek's dad warns. He smiles, like a father.<p>

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><p>2. They line up in the foyer even though it's a tight squeeze. People stand closer together when someone dies: this is what Mark has learned. They stand closer but they feel far apart. When Derek's mom walks in holding Amy - who's wrapped around her like the baby monkeys at the zoo - they sigh as one. "Is she okay?" Derek sounds unsteady. He didn't stay at the hospital last night. He shrugged off the EMTs. Not all injuries show anyway. Amy lifts her head at the sound of his voice, but the thumb in her mouth obscures her response.<p>

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><p>3."It's just a car, man." He regrets the words as soon as he says them. Derek turns fierce eyes on him and his voice is sharp."It's more than just a car." Mark wants to think he means<em> it's more than just a car <em>because it's Amy, because it's his baby sister. He doesn't want to think it means _it's more than just a car_ because it's an antique. Amy comes in with a sling around her arm and Nancy supporting her and Mark says "hey" and Derek says "you disgust me." (Not with his voice. Just with his eyes.)

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><p>4. "Is Aunt Amy coming home because it's Christmas?" Derek mutters something and Addison wipes a hand across her eyes so Mark crouches down in front of the little boy. "Because she's all better now," he snorts. Addison swallows a sob."Look, your parents are back." Mark picks up Sean, shows him out the front window where Amy is easing herself out of the car, slowly. Kathleen is lounging against the driver's side: even in large sunglasses, she looks disapproving. "Merry Christmas, Amy," Mark says quietly when she crosses the threshold. Amy pushes down her dark glasses. "Is it?"<p>

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><p>5. He barely makes it to the hospital. She's gone before her brother lands. In Addison's sun-drenched beach house, Derek looks stooped, greyish. Crumpled, like the cars. They swallow hard on red wine. No one says what everyone is thinking: <em>How?<em> "There's nothing you could've done." Addison's voice is trembling and Mark remembers her habit of saying things to others that she wants to hear herself: _Derek won't find out. It will be okay. _So he puts his arm around her shaking shoulders, says: "You either." It tastes like a lie, like the only truth in the room is her tears.


	7. Saying No

**Prompted in some form by Summer, but I can't remember the details...**

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><p><strong><em>Saying No<em>**

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><p>She's not very good at saying no.<p>

That's what her first therapist said. He was a caricature really, salt and pepper hair and suede-patched tweed and glasses that slid halfway down his Roman nose when he leaned forward, all too eager to swallow her secrets. _I can say no_, she told him, folding her legs under her and watching him watch her. Yeah, she slept with him, but only because he wrote her that scrip. _Just this once_, he said, flattering himself. Flattening her. She tripped on a fistful of tablets, fell into a bottle. It's slippery, recovery. She's on her feet and then back on her knees. On the soles of her feet, bare and bruised from the hot sand. _ Don't turn a slip into a fall_, Charlotte said. Jake's a former addict too. Who knew? But - no such thing as former, he said, and they went to a meeting together. _I came close_, she admitted it to him. And to Charlotte. _I think I'm falling for you,_ she said. His hands were large; he swept them through her hair. He swept the veil off her face - the veil was her mother's idea, of course, as was wearing white. _I should be wearing red_, she joked. Red and wrinkled, that's how the baby looked when she first greeted the world with a loud wail. _Auntie Amelia_, she breathed. Is she breathing? Oh god, is she breathing? Little hands, warm lips on her cheek, cuddled into the curve of her side. _You didn't fall_, Charlotte said. Her fairy-light hands were cool and confident. _I came so close_, she countered. _So close_, he panted. Annabel's not a baby anymore. Lengthening, smiling, laughing, growing. Addison glowed, maternal-soft, beaming. _You could have your own_, she said. Amelia just laughed. _I have time_, she said. So much time. It would have been autumn in Paris, but Annabel was a summer baby. July. Good thing it wasn't August or everything would be closed, Amelia grinned down at her. Annabel twined lanky arms around her neck. _I love you, Aunt Amelia. _ _Happy birthday, sweetheart._ You with us, sweetheart? You going to come back to us? Amelia? She opens half-stuck eyes slowly. Above her, unfamiliar faces fizzle into her vision. Her skin aches. Her joints crack, old. She can't feel her toes. "There you go. You going to come back to us?"

She closes her eyes again and says: "No."


	8. Stolen

_Addison's longing for a baby turns dark. _Rachael's prompt: _She did it first and she did it better, but here's my free-write contribution._

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><p><strong><em>Stolen<em>**

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><p>He thinks he will remember it in fits in starts, in very small moments and some larger ones. In the phone call, of course, dissected: the faint odor of the floor cleaner that swished past him, the color of the purpling sky outside the glass doors, the light tremor in his hand - the left, of course - when they say it.<p>

"She _what_?"

He tries to assemble the words, make sense of them, but it's like that refrigerator-magnet poetry popular a decade before - Addison bought a set for the fridge in the Hamptons house - and he can't put it together. He hears each word alone:

_Addison _

_Amber_

_Alert _

_Car_

_Gone_

_Code_

_Pink_

His blackberry slides between sweating fingers. It's Amy on the phone, then it's Sam, their voices mingling with concern and fear. He hears them bicker in the background.

"We didn't want to worry you," Sam says.

"What are you saying?"

But they don't know.

"So tell me what you do know," he coaxes, like they're patients, and this is what he hears: that a newborn disappeared from the hospital. That no one can find Addison. That people are asking questions. He hears his little sister's voice, demanding the phone like she used to as a kid when Grandma called, and then she's whispering into the phone. Blood is thicker than water and he can tell the others can't hear.

"Derek." Her voice is low, urgent. "It's bad, Derek."

"Do you -"

"Her car's gone. The baby's gone. She delivered the kid and the parents took off, but they didn't surrender so the state takes the baby, and-"

"What are you saying?" he asks again.

"Derek, she wanted a baby so badly."

"Amy," he says sharply.

"She was doing IVF, but the eggs didn't implant. She was so disappointed. And this baby - she's been out of touch for almost twenty-four hours, Derek, and we're scared."

"Why are you calling me?" he asks finally.

"In the hopes that you wouldn't say that," Amy responds dully. "And that maybe you've changed just a little bit, or..."

He shakes his head. "Amy, what - what can I possibly do?"

"Just - I don't know. Derek, the police are here. They're asking questions, Derek, and just in case anyone calls you or anything, or-"

"Call me when you find her," he interrupts, and pressed _end _with finality.

It's not as easy as that, though.

Endings rarely are.

He gets behind the wheel with the idea that he'll go to Meredith's; something's cold inside of him, chilled to the bone and he'd like the warmth of her small body tucked into his. But he turns instead, loads the car onto the ferry and decides he'll check on the house. He's going to hire a builder. One of these days he's going to let someone else do what he can't.

Something draws him to the trailer, instead.

_I don't know why,_ he'll say later.

The lights are off but a flicker of warmth comes from the windows anyway. It's nearly dark.

He pushes the door open, clarity washing through him uninvited. He knows what he will see and yet he's surprised anyway. After all this time, it's somehow not unexpected. Because there it is, the sight that fed his fantasies, a decade ago, and later haunted his dreams. She's turning around, a curtain of red hair hiding her face, one long finger pressed to her lips. _Shhh_, she murmurs. _I've just gotten her to sleep._

He's robbed of breath and logic. Finally, he speaks: "It's a girl?"

Addison nods. He wants to turn on the light but he's afraid to startle her. He takes a careful step toward the bed and there, sure enough, in a nest of pillows, is a tiny infant. Sleepy half-snores drift out of its little puckered mouth.

"Julia."

"Excuse me?"

"Her name is Julia."

"Addison, what are you -" but he breaks off. He can't ask _what are you doing here? _He's in another world, he's down the rabbit hole, and he's afraid of the power of one false move. His fingers move as subtly as he can in his pocket, feeling for his blackberry. He should call Mark. Or Amy. Let them know.

"How was your day?" Her voice is so studiedly normal that he's positive, for an instant, that he's the crazy one. Did he make all this up, the last four years? Is _this_ their life, their claustrophobic shoebox of a life, their sleeping infant? But no, the hospital tag still circles the miniscule wrist. She's no one's baby. She's been kidnapped, and Addison's the one who-

"Addie, you - your friends are worried about you," he says finally.

She nods, seeming to take in his words. "I'll tell them I'm sorry."

"You'll-"

"Once I'm there."

"Once you're-"

"We're just stopping here, Derek. Just for the night." He moves slightly closer, close enough to touch and sees the dark circles under her eyes.

"You drove all this way-"

"I had to."

"Addison..."

"Derek, they were going to take her."

"Who?"

She shakes her head. "Julia needs me, Derek. She needs a mother. She deserves a mother."

"Addie-"

"We're going to Canada."

He freezes with a conciliatory hand halfway to her shoulder. "What?"

"As soon as I make some coffee. I just don't remember where-" And she stops, fumbles on the counter for a moment. Her voice sounds almost hurt with the realization that things are different.

"I'm not sure I have any."

She blinks.

"Addison, you - have you slept?"

"There's no time for that."

He just stares at her. Her shadowy silhouette in the darkened trailer, the eerie calm to her voice - it has the quality of a dream: that recognizable combination of reality and surreality. The way she moves through the trailer. The sleeping infant on the bed, though. Stolen from the hospital. He feels sick to his stomach.

"Addison, listen, I know you're trying to help her, but we can still - let me call Sam, okay?"

Her face darkens noticeably. "Sam and I are over."

"Amy, then."

"Don't call anyone, Derek."

"Addison-"

"We're leaving. I'm not giving her to social services, Derek. I _saved _her!" and her voice is higher now, biting, like the wind outside. "That _woman_ didn't care, she didn't stick around long enough to see her. She was losing oxygen, Derek, and I got her out of there. _I'm _the reason she's here. _I'm _her mother."

He stares at her, unable to respond. _What have we done to you? _he doesn't say. He was so long ago now, their marriage, their divorce. A third of his life, ancient history now. She's pale and fierce. When did this happen?

"I need coffee," she repeats. "Coffee and a shower-"

His face burns when she says _shower_, fills his mind with memories and burns his cheeks with shame at the way her flesh spilled welcome from lace cups, her legs molded around his. The heat of her: the trusting, pliant weight of her against him as he vented his rage into her.

"-and we're leaving."

"Addie..."

"You could come with us." And now her eyes are shining, the way they would get when she had a plan. _We could buy a house out here. We could cook Thanksgiving dinner ourselves. _

"Addison-"

"We'll go to Canada. No one will follow us there, I need - I need to be somewhere I can protect her. We'll take your car, it has better treads. We'll drive into the country where no one will find us." Her words are short staccato bursts. Perspiration beads her high forehead and he looks at her with a clinician's eyes. Has she had a psychotic break? She's speaking quickly, words overlapping.

"We could be a family. Just the three of us. Like it should have been. Derek, will you come with us? Will you?"

The air in the trailer is thick with silence. it smells faintly of her perfume, like she's never left. His lips part to respond, his mouth dry. He looks at the white oval of her face, the chapped slash of pink he's kissed so many times. _Just once will do, _the reverend joked and everyone on his side of the church laughed. Not her mother, sour-faced. Not her father, cool blue gaze focused on Kathleen in her off-the-shoulder dress.

_This child was let down by everyone who was supposed to care about her. Do you know how that feels?_

Soft sleepy sounds come from the bed.

_This baby has no one. Someone needs to fight for her. _

There's a squeezing feeling in his chest, in his throat. What had she ever asked of him, really? At the end, they fought over property in reverse. _Take the brownstone. You take the brownstone. _The only thing she asked for was him. _Please Derek, please you have to give me a chance to show you how sorry I am. _All she asked for was everything.

He thinks about her future: the pavement beneath the wheels of his jeep, the child turning to a toddler in her arms, a cabin in a town he can't pronounce. Her hair, dyed dark. Her years of training, lost to secrecy. Five locks on the door. The child won't ask because no one will say it. A house of silence like the one that broke her. He feels the bite on his skin, the high winds of the Canadian Rockies, the chill that would freeze him down to his bones.

He opens his mouth. There are words in there, sticking to his tongue; he looks out the small window for solace and that's when he sees them.

Just beyond the lakefront, their lights off. Unmarked but obvious, like the strip of whiter skin on the fourth finger of her left hand. Of course they came. They would have looked him up, done a property search. She's still looking at him expectantly, pupils dilated, irises a pale green in the soft light.

He won't remember their color. Time is moving quickly now, quicker like the cars make their way across the open field.

But it turns out what he will remember won't be the sound of their tires snapping a fragile twig in two. It won't be the way her shoulder went rigid under his fingers when he touched her, some last desire to shield her bending his elbow of its own accord. It won't even be the kiss he pressed to her temple as the door swung open, the unbearable Judas touch of her skin to his lips just before they grabbed her. It will be something he can never tell anyone and something he never does.

It will how close - how goddamn close - he came to just saying _yes._


	9. Four Thanksgivings Amy Remembers

_It's not a holiday without some Shepherd angst. Prompted by Summer._

* * *

><p><strong>Four Thanksgivings Amy Remembers and One She Doesn't<strong>

* * *

><p>1. "Help Mommy dust." That's the request so Amy takes the feathers in one small hand and runs them along the bookcase. Everyone will be here soon to eat turkey and pretend it's okay. Can't be dusty. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That's what Pastor Dan said at the service Amy was allowed at. She wasn't allowed at the cemetery so she doesn't know where they actually put him. "Where's Daddy?" she asks but Mom just gets a crying face and says "In heaven, sweetheart." "Where's heaven?" she asks Derek and he says "Leave me alone, Amy." The turkey burns.<p>

2. She's sick of turkey stink, pies and family so so she slinks under the table, twelve years old in Kathy's heels. "Goddamnit Amy, what are you doing?" Derek hisses but she can barely hear him, her concentration on Mark and the way his ankle disappears into his carefully shined shoes. One finger reaches out. She moves her hand higher, touches warm bare skin. His leg jerks. The table moves. "Amy!" Derek grabs her up and he doesn't cover her mouth this time, just puts his face close to hers. "Stop acting so crazy!" She smiles sweetly at him. "Who's acting?"

3. "I'm a vegetarian." Amy shoves reeking turkey off her plate. When no one responds she picks up a wing with disgust and shakes it toward her sisters. "You're murderers." Everyone's looking over her head like she doesn't see them. "Amy, want to go for a walk?" Addie's tremulous voice. "No. Why don't you go inflict yourself on your own family?" Addison shrinks back, hurt. Amy wonders why everyone looks so sad. Why be miserable when the alternative is so much better? She pulls a ziplock baggie from the pocket of her skintight jeans, enjoying their shocked faces. "Who wants dessert?"

4. _Light and sound and oh god no what are you doing ow Derek my face my face I can't breathe copper pennies slipping through her fingers, copper blood on her hands, in her mouth, they're biting her. _ She opens her mouth and screams raw wet loud eyes screwed shut the nightmares might be awake. A man's voice, a woman too. _Open your eyes, Amy_, they say. Her stomach bleeds and twists and she opens them. White mystery walls close on her. _What day is it?_ she croaks. _November twenty-eighth, they say. You've been out of it for almost a week._

5. Everything is, or isn't, the same. The ratty upholstered chairs. The turkey smell, the mountain of stuffing. Her hand shakes when she reaches for a serving dish. "Are you okay?" She ignores Addison, looks at her brother instead. He regards her like a stranger. "Derek," she says hesitantly but he looks right past her. "I think we all agree that we're so thankful Amy's all better," her mother announces, beaming, and Amy scowls at the broad lined face, the simplistic smile. "Call me Amelia," she says and shoves a mouthful of mashed potato between her lips. It tastes like dust.


	10. Crash Sites

_If one thing changed, would everything else change?_

**Crash Sites**

He thinks they have been asking him questions from the moment he left the womb. Women, that is. All of them needing something from him: Information. Reassurance.

Now she is watching him expectantly and he realizes what her questions mean - that he has to talk to her, or he'll lose her. He lets bits of himself slip out: Colors. Music.

And he waits.

"I have three sisters," he says finally. He lets the number wash over him, breathes quietly. Things are still lost, when you stop looking. "Four. I had four sisters. I... lost one of them."

_Watch her carefully, Derek! You know how she is. Don't let her get lost. He folds her small fingers into his so she won't hop off like a sparrow with a crumb - that's what Mom says - while they walk. He's her big brother and that means he's supposed to look out for her._

Meredith's eyes are wide, her expression gentle. There's something about her face; it's not that it's accepting, exactly, more that it's used to bad news. The curve of her cheek doesn't change, her jaw doesn't set. She just listens. He craves this, wants to grab the sleeve of her winter-white coat and pull her into him. Pull himself out.

_Watch me, Derek! She tugs out of his grasp, giggling, to show him a little fingerprint in the new cement. Don't tell, she whispers. _

"What happened?" she asks softly.

_"We lost her." He thinks at first that they mean the chase, hot on her trail, the wheels still on his mind. Doesn't even catch on until he hears Nancy sob._

"Car accident." He stares numbly through the trees at the welcoming silver of the trailer.

She's silent.

He runs down the list, honesty only slightly easier than he'd thought: "It was my car. She stole it. After she stole my prescription pad."

_It's a bitter discovery, pages ripped off, the inevitable call from the medical board. He'd be dragged somewhere to answer questions he couldn't. I'm finished with her, that's what he rages. He tries to rip the rest of the pad in half but "your hands!" His training-to-be-a-surgeon-hands. Addison frees the paper from his twisting fingers, two of his knuckles streaked with faint lines of blood. Like he's punched someone the way he wanted to but really it was paper cuts. Paper! She presses the back of his hand to her lips and he jerks away, annoyed, but he can't push her off when she wraps her arms around his neck and presses in close, humming in his ears. "Amy will be back, honey. They'll find her."_

"She was an addict," and it's the first time he's said it out loud, to someone new. Someone old doesn't count, someone who was there and watched his little sister disappear into the ugliness that consumed her. It sounds bleaker than he thought it would, harsher. A condemnation, or maybe just an assignment. He can't hear himself say what she _is_ without hearing _her_ voice instead, feather-light while she jumped into leaf piles and stomped through mud puddles. The things kids say: I'm going to be an astronaut! I'm going to be a ballerina! I'm going to be president!

_"Derek, watch me!" She wants him to watch, to look at her. Calling at him from the edge of the lake where she dips little toes, ankles, knees. "Look at me, Derek!" She swims with an awkward flailing that's somehow grace and he laughs in spite of himself. "Watch this!" He hears the splashing but doesn't turn to look at her. Won't do to spoil her. "Come on, Amy, we have to go to the store." He hears her paddling behind him. "I'm a mermaid! I can't go to the store!" She splashes around and he turns, she's pretending her legs are bound together in a tail. "No feet," she giggles. "I"m a mermaid, see?"_

"She was an addict." He says it again like it's all she was, because in the end ... that's all she was. He pauses, still a doctor. "They said if she'd been leaning an inch to the left she could have survived." He's often wished they could've kept that detail to themselves. An inch is so little. One joint of one finger and she might have emerged from the twisted wreckage of smoking metal. The space between two perforations of his belt and he might have been yelling at her for smashing up his prized car. The length of one thorn and he might have been bringing roses to her hospital bed instead of her grave. An inch is _nothing._ Nothing but the measure of space between life and death, between finding someone and losing her.

Meredith's face is soft with compassion now. The sharp bite of honesty presses his tongue to his teeth.

So he won't say, _I lost my father too._

_I could have lost you too, his mother says, smothering him in her embrace. With his face pressed into her ample bosom he can't ask the question that forms: was it you too or you two? Amy's in a doctor's arms now, legs cycling away from him, calling out shrilly. Someone that loud could never be lost. Right?_

It's something else he blurts:

"I have a wife."

Meredith's expression doesn't change, almost as if she's been expecting this.

It's not the first time in these months he's said the word. _Wife. _On its own it's meaningless, it's a patient whose husband he's updating. He doesn't say _my wife._

_She slips through his fingers like water, lighter than air when he shakes her, how could you do this? And then bigger arms grabbing him. I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry. All he could do was drive as far and fast as he knew how, leave their white shocked faces behind, pretend he didn't see them in every streetlight and blinking motel sign on the road. Drive like he had nothing to lose. _

"Had," he corrects. "I ... I lost her too."

He doesn't know who's sitting on a plane at that instant, over the Rockies, heavy with child. Doesn't yet realize that things we lose sometimes have a way of finding us again.

"I understand," Meredith whispers. She takes it from him, everything he's said, swallows it. She covers her hand with his.

_Derek, watch me! __Amy splashes in the water, sleek and eager and big-eyed, reminding him of a seal, her wet dark hair streaked with copper-penny highlights from the summer light. "Look at me!" she calls and this time he does, staring right at her until the top of her sun-bright head disappears beneath the surface. The water ripples briefly before smoothing out again - as if nothing has ever disturbed it. _


	11. Five Beds Addison Has Slept In

**Five Beds Addison Has Slept In**

1. "You're supposed to sleep on it, not under it!" The au pair laughs - _Ana_, just one N. Addison likes spelling. Two Ds in her name. Ana understands spelling but she doesn't understand why Addison's under the bed. It's just so quiet down here, soft pink carpet fluff. No monsters. Small and warm and safe: Her canopy bed is too big. But Ana puts out her hand so Addison lets herself be lifted onto the huge mattress. She reaches for Ana's hand again. "Stay with me?" Ana smiles and kisses her forehead in a way that Addison understands means _no_.

2. The creaking, squeaking of the wheels makes her giggle and bury her face in the cheap dormitory pillow. It's not a bed, it's a mattress on a half-rusted spring and it wasn't made for this - abandon. This reckless tangle of limbs, her tumble of hair and the scratch of his stubble on sensitive flesh. _One day we'll have a house_, he says. _We'll have a four-poster and hundred-count sheets_ - god, his naivete is endearing - _and more pillows than we can count. We'll have everything._ She tangles her fingers in his hair because this is all she needs.

3. His bed is as much of a contradiction as its owner: one of those designs so expensive it's worked its way back down to the bare minimum. Sleek and black, so slippery she can't hold onto it. Derek asked him about it once; it's all constructed from one trunk of endangered walnut or something like that - or maybe Mark was kidding - but thinking about that conversation, the clink of wineglasses, the hand on her knee - makes her throat constrict. "What's wrong?" His arm is endless around her. "Nothing," she says, and tells herself that's what she feels.

4. There's a patch of sky that filters through the opening on the roof. A little split in the silver metal. A small gash, a wound that might heal itself without stitches. Tonight, late, moonlight puddles on the wool blanket she's thrown over them to keep the cold out. She sleeps tucked against the concave wall at her left elbow; the other choice is less welcoming. Inches from her own fingers, the turned-up palm of her husband. She lets her fingers skate closer, braver than her lips. "Derek, I-" He mumbles something in his sleep and shifts away, covering the light.

5. They used to slide over satin sheets in shades of chocolate, taupe, caramel. Then he switched to thousand-count cotton as dry as his goodnight kiss. He calls her Addie now and she pretends it's nothing new. She touches her belly, churning with hormones. Still flat. "I"m going to try again," she reminds him. His hands, big and warm, cover the space where her words hang. She speaks again: "And you're okay with that." An embarrassing croak in her voice. Sam takes her in his arms and presses his lips to her neck in a way she pretends doesn't mean _no_.


	12. Tell Me

_Prompt from AmyHale - Addison/Amelia interactions through the years. _

* * *

><p><strong>Tell Me<strong>

* * *

><p>"Tell me a story," Amy suggests the first time she visits, and the light in her pale eyes makes Addison sad. She sees herself in that ten-year-old, in the half-down mask that expects to be rejected.<p>

Addison used to think a house full of siblings, an attentive mother, would make all the difference. That it would make a family, that somewhere in the raucous pack of Shepherds someone would always see Amy, would always make time for her.

But maybe not; maybe a family is something else entirely. Maybe it has something to do with the trusting gaze, the way Amy's little fingers curl around the edge of the chair.

So she collects the little girl in her arms, several growth spurts away from the woman she might become, and tells her a story.

* * *

><p>"Tell me how it feels," Amy asks again when they stand at the glass counter of the jewelry store.<p>

"A pinch," Addison promises. "You'll barely feel it."

"Really?" Amy's fingers linger on the glass, and Addison can see the tactile longing in the way they move. The sparkle of the little jewels are calling to her.

"Really." Addison tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear.

Amy dips her head back, pure anticipation, and Addison is - for just a moment - envious of her youth, of her ability to feel this much. Addison strokes one unpunctured earlobe, as peachy soft as rabbit fur.

"Ready?" she asks gently.

"Hold my hand?" Amy asks in return and Addison folds their fingers together and doesn't let go.

* * *

><p>"Tell Mom I'll be back later," Amy pleads, ducking out the side door, through the garage. Addison props a hand on her hip. The little sister herself, she's unsure what this means, what her role is. "Pretty please, Addie," and Amy's the little girl with a gap-toothed smile again, braces melting away. Jeans and a vest, brow furrowed against the cold and looking a little anxious, shifting from foot to foot. Dead leaves crunch under her boots.<p>

"Okay, Addie? You know I'd ask but I'm technically grounded even though it's totally unfair and you _know_ you agree with me." She sounds like her brother in that moment. You _know..._ but it's Amy.

"We're having dinner soon..." Addison trails off, weakening. Amy's just going to meet her friends. She won't be long. It's barely a secret.

It's no big deal.

* * *

><p>"Tell me I'm going to feel better," Amy begs, and her little hands look all wrong wrapped around a mug of coffee. Addison strokes her hair, still stiff with last night's prom hairspray, wondering if it's wrong to mother her through a hangover like this -<p>

_Mother._ It's the word on everyone's tongue now. She's not getting any younger, that was her mother-in-law's opening gambit. Addison touches her flat stomach like Derek had early that morning, propped on an elbow and waiting for her permission to ease himself on top of her. _You're on her side,_ Addison had sulked and Derek just laughed in that way he did when he thought she was being ridiculous. _This isn't a war,_ he said reasonably so she rolled onto her back, surrendering.

Now she runs a comforting hand down Amy's back. "It's a hangover, sweetie. I know it feels strange and awful now, but you'll be fine once you sleep it off."

Later she'll wonder why she assumed it was her first.

* * *

><p>"Tell me where they are." Amy scowls at her.<p>

"No, honey, you shouldn't be smoking." Addison smiles patiently at her. This is normal, this experimentation. Trying a drink, trying a cigarette. She's a teenager, but she's still her surrogate baby sister, her sweet little-

"Give me back my fucking smokes, Addie!"

Addison steps back, words like a slap. A flush grows under her cheekbones. "Cigarettes kill," she says sharply and Amy rolls her eyes. It makes her look older, meaner.

"So what?" she asks and seems to like the way it sounds because she steps closer, and Addison - hating herself for it - steps back again. "Let them."

* * *

><p>"Tell Derek he can fuck himself." Amy's wrenching away from her, dry coughing, something dark and wet crusted in her hair. "Fuck his car and fuck him."<p>

Addison's hands float above her, afraid to touch her. It seems wrong that she should be so small, sunken chest and hipbones poking through the thin hospital blanket. Has time gone backwards? Shouldn't Amy be bigger, take up more space?

"Amy, he saved your life."

"I don't fucking care!" she hisses. "Why are you even here, Addison? I'm not your family. I'm not your anything."

"Amy, I-"

Her sister-in-law's eyes are black with anger. "Just get out. _Get out._"

* * *

><p>"Tell me I don't have to go," Amy whispers, her voice cracking. Addison's mouth is an empty o.<p>

"Please, Addie, I'm sorry." Amy's chin is wobbling, her lips cracked.

Addison's mouth is dry too. Derek didn't even come in, drove her to the door and all but pushed her out of the car. while it was still moving.

_I said I was finished with her_, he snapped. _Don't push, Addison. Just get her to that place and be done with it._ The message was clear: she was lucky she even got a ride.

Amy's dressed, sitting on the side of the bed, painfully thin legs somewhere in the folds of her jeans. Addison backs all the way out of the door this time.

Maybe Amy was right: she was never her family.

* * *

><p>"Tell me to go," Amy - no, Amelia - suggests that first night, resting a small hand on the back of the chair that faces the beach. "You have no reason to let me stay."<p>

Addison follows her gaze to the ocean. Amelia keeps talking, maybe the same little chatterbox somewhere beneath new curves, her voice calm but insistent.

"Addison Montgomery. Just ... Montgomery now, right? So you don't need to run a home for wayward Shepherds anymore; you dropped the name." Amelia draws breath and in that trembling moment she's Amy again. "You're free now."

Addison is still silent. Maybe she's always been able to say more without speaking. "Stay," is all she murmurs, covering Amelia's smaller hand with her own in a way that says _family_ without words.


	13. Close Enough

_Summer's prompt - Amelia doesn't quite make her flight to Seattle to see Derek._

* * *

><p><strong>Close Enough<strong>

* * *

><p>She makes it to the airport - that's farther than she would have expected. Boarding pass in hand, canvas tote she should have outgrown slung over her shoulder, she's halfway to the gate - breathing in that familiar airport scent of synthetic carpet and jet fuel and fast food - when she remembers that she has legs and those legs walk her away from the gate as she can get. Naturally, she crosses the airport full length and naturally, on the other side, as far from the LAX-Sea-Tac flight she's abandoning, is a plane leaving in an twenty minutes to Puerto Vallarta. She likes beaches for the same reason she likes airports: they're as impersonal as they are intimate. Where else can you lose yourself and find yourself at once?<p>

At the counter she purchases a ticket, money sliding through her fingers like ocean water.

She's miles in the air before she remembers that flying without a drink is like trying to stand on sea legs. It's how she got to LA from Boston but there were other considerations then; the guy in 12B who smiled at her jut long enough that she knew when he stood up he was watiing for her to follow. Air sickness tends to disappear when other distractions are there.

Her bag is full of down and wool and fleece - it's winter where she'd thought she'd be - so she strips to lingerie. Close enough to a bikini to pass, isn't it? Close like the bullet that grazed her brother's life once, twice. Two times.

An umbrella shields her from the sun; what she likes about beaches is that everyone in her life is already there. She can see them, stretched out on the sand or dipping tentative toes into the water. There, on the blue and white striped towel, that's her brother, blackberry in hand and not really listening to his wife's questions - the wife, slender neck and sad eyes, leaning over him just a little too closely, laughing just a little too brightly. That's Addison. The single woman juggling a passel of children: her own mother, of course. The teenager sitting alone - no, not that one, the one with her knees drawn up so far her chin is resting on them. She can remember with equal force being that flexible and that alone. Ducking under boardwalks and behind stories, palm and more outstretched. Wanting to feel like something more than a near miss.

Four days. That's how long she spends on the beach, drinking ginger ale, flexing her toes in the sand, arching her back under the distracted man from the beach. Ignoring her phone. Ignoring how fucked up her choice in men can be.

"Did you see him?" Addison asks when she gets back. "Did you clear everything up?"

"I cleared it up."

"Did you talk to Derek?" Amelia asks, slightly worried - but of course she knows her secret's safe. How could it not be? Revealing it would have depended on Derek noticing, caring, and calling Addison, theree things he's not exactly known for. And so the golden boy's indifference saves the day, thus ensuring another decade of golden boy status. She offers up a silent thanks and smiles benevolently at Addison. Her long-suffering sister-in-law has waited long enough.

"How was Derek?" Addison asks again. The look in her eyes is a little too eager. Her undoing.

"He hasn't changed." Amelia smiles, as if this is a good thing, and heads out the door for the beach.


	14. 100 x 14

_For the fourteenth chapter: 14 separate 100-word ficlets - one of my favorite exercises. Most of these are from the 100in100 challenge; check out maddekcabmeme on LJ for more by me and others. Each of the fics below is one very short story in is own universe, packaged together here just for convenience. They should all be self-explanatory, and the various perspectives/tones reflect my sometimes-conflicted feelings about the Grey's/PP universe pretty accurately. Thoughts? _

* * *

><p>1. Addison wants a baby. Sam wants Addison, but no baby. Love conquers all, so they stay together. Addison changes diapers; Sam massages her back. Addison chooses preschools; Sam does that thing with his tongue. He pleads with her to get a night nanny. Sophie's just a baby. Sophie's only a kid. Sophie won't care. Sophie will understand, one day. She'll fall in love with a good man who can't really make her happy. She'll call her mother to say she's in love. She'll hide the bruises and paste on a smile and tell herself her children will understand, one day.<p>

* * *

><p>2. Derek never could forgive her. And it wasn't the car - that pissed him off, sure, but he got over it. Not rehab either, or the stolen prescription pad or pawning Addison's necklace. She flew to Seattle and fucked Mark and he got over that too. What is it, then? Amelia doesn't quite understand until her eyes flutter open in an unfamiliar hospital bed, too much sun to be Seattle and the voices aren't New York and when did Derek get so old?<p>

"Another close call," he says dully, eyes tired.

That's what he couldn't forgive her for: surviving. Again.

* * *

><p>3. The drink - warm, silly, spicy and everything she loves about Christmas - is the first thing she's really tasted since she moved out here. It's not depression, she thinks. It's not sadness or missing him. Everything's just greyer here, duller. Then the taste dries on her tongue when he tells her he's in love (not with her). She kneels on the hard floor of the tiny trailer bathroom, explosions of light behind her eyes.<p>

"What are you doing?" Derek calls (not "are you okay?").

"Nothing," she calls back.

The drink comes up and this time it tastes like regret.

* * *

><p>4. "You bitch," Amelia hisses. "A fucking intervention? You hypocrite, I kept <em>your<em> secret."

"Don't rise," Violet tells them. "Say what you came to say. Don't let her disrupt."

"Amelia, I love you," Addison begins just like she practiced.

"Shut up!" Amelia shrieks. "I saw you fucking Mark. In my brother's bed, you whore, and now you're judging _me_?"

"You said it was the first time. When I caught you." Derek can't even look at her. Amelia laughs shrilly.

"What does it matter now?" Addison asks tiredly.

"It matters," Derek scowls. He slams the door behind him just like old times.

* * *

><p>5. When Sam was a little boy he spent every summer evening chasing lightning bugs at his family's bungalow on the Jersey shore. They were so beautiful and he desperately wanted one for his very own. When he finally caught one and sealed it in a jar he was thrilled. But the next morning, its light was gone. It was a plain, ordinary bug, near death, wings beating feebly. Ugly. Disappointing. He tells Addison the story as she burrows clingily into his chest.<p>

"What made you think of that?" she asks.

"No reason," he mumbles, and extricates himself to go shower.

* * *

><p>6. Blondes are supposed to have more fun, so she laughs when she shows him. She laughs high and hollow and he just puts his arms around her and makes the sibilant noises you might to a fussing baby. It's strange, because she's not crying. The moisture in his shirt is mirth, not misery. He loves blondes, doesn't he? He fucks that blonde pedes nurse and she leaves a note on his pillow: Gone to Seattle. She slips back into red hair and Gucci coat and Derek's life. Two months of her life wash down the drain with the cheap dye.<p>

* * *

><p>7. "Get it together, Amelia." Addison supports the smaller woman's wobbly frame, drags her through the door.<p>

Vomit-spattered and dizzy, she slurs her words: "You wanted a kid so badly, Addison - sometimes it's messy."

Addison pulls back, stung. "You're not my kid."

"No," Amelia agrees, vodka and anger dilating her pupils. "You got rid of that one too."

Addison's never slapped anyone before, but she does it now. Arm back, full force. Bizzy would be proud. She leaves Amelia alone, half-passed-out on the couch. Opening a bottle of wine, she locks herself in the bathroom, waiting to become her mother.

* * *

><p>8. She's a licensed OB-GYN and she's performed the procedure herself, hundreds of times, so she knows the answer. But she still wonders if he'll be able to tell. If he'll touch her and notice something is different. If he'll realize what she did. The moment comes. She holds her breath a little as he tugs rain-damp jeans from her hips. His fingers slip inside her and she tenses, watching him closely. Waiting. He doesn't say anything. She searches his face for reassurance, confusion, anger - anything. But his faraway eyes reveal only that he's not thinking about her at all.<p>

* * *

><p>9. Derek's face when he opens the door is smug - then confused. "Who's this?" he asks, gesturing at the $1000hour lawyer who's handling things pro bono.

"She's helping me with the adoption."

"Helping _us_."

"Sorry," Meredith shrugs. "You walked out. For three days. Parenting is about commitment."

"How would you know?" he snaps. "You really think you can be a parent without me?"

"The court does," the lawyer smiles. "I fast-tracked it."

Derek's mouth drops open. He calls the one person he knows will take his side and unloads. But "Who do you think found her that lawyer?" Addison asks.

* * *

><p>10. When Meredith forgets, they're the ones who remind her. They remember what she likes to eat and wear and watch on the low humming television set. They tell her stories about their intern year; the old tales feel new to her. She doesn't ask much about Derek, and they're glad - the less she remembers of him the better.<p>

"Who here has no idea what they're doing?" Alex asks once, to break the tension. Everyone, even Meredith, laughs. Because it's true.

"Is George coming too?" she asks quietly one early morning.

"You'll see him soon," Izzie promises. And she does.

* * *

><p>11. When the stick turns a surprise blue he promises he'll do his share, but teacher conferences and ballet recitals fall to her as surely as the fellowship offers fall away. He slices into a skull while she divvies up birthday cake. He lectures at Harvard while she reads fairytales. He sleeps at the hospital while she checks under the bed for monsters. Tired of cold leftovers and chilly toes, she lets Mark warm her. Derek walks in - then out again. He moves cross-country and Addison promises her daughter things won't be too different. The sad part is, she's right.<p>

* * *

><p>12. It starts out simple. It always does. She slips on the treadmill, tears a ligament. The pills they give her are tiny yellow tickets to another world. It's hazy when she wakes. It's heaven when she sleeps. Small fingers stroke her cheek, blue eyes seek hers, red-gold curls reflect the sun. <em>You're not real<em>, she challenges. But that makes the little girl cry. So she swallows more, sees her again, begs forgiveness. The girl's stronger now, Addison can touch her.

"Addie, you can't live like this," Amelia says.

_So live with me_, the little girl offers. Addison takes her hand.

* * *

><p>13. She didn't beg Mark to leave that night, to let her handle Derek alone. She changed her mind three blocks from the doctor's office and let the life within her grow. When Mark came to Seattle, she apologized again to Derek for hurting him and left with Mark for New York. She took him back in Seattle, no bets needed. She didn't make him ask again, in California. In Seattle, she kissed him good-bye and promised to come back soon.<p>

"What about you, Addie? Is there anything you would do over, if you could?"

Addison shrugs. "Maybe a few things."

* * *

><p>14. Some people never learn. He loves her hot and heavy until it bores him, and they slowly drift apart. When he catches her with that pretty-boy resident, he turns and walks out. He's sensitive - a catch - and sick of the women in his life taking advantage and betraying his trust. He drives all night, lounges on a barstool in a town he's never seen before.<p>

"I'm just a guy in a bar," he tells the pretty brunette seated next to him. She tastes like cherries.

Some people never learn, but Meredith does - she sends the divorce papers by mail.


	15. Twelve Days of Amy

**_Amy's twelve days of Christmas. Part of Summer's charmingly-requested Christmas present. Angsty!Amy: the gift that keeps on giving. _**

* * *

><p><em>On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, an addict in her childhood home.<em>

Amy presses her hands to her ears, every cheerfully off-key note echoing inside her head. "Nancy, do they have to keep singing?"

"It's Christmas." Nancy frowns and Cassie, her oldest, pouts. Kathleen's three indistinguishable sons, tumbling out one after the other like dominoes, crash toy trains into each other and resume singing lustily.

"Nancy-"

"Get in the spirit, Amy." Nancy stacks the remaining dishes, pushing a folding chair closer to the table with one slippered foot. "It's-"

"Christmas," Amy finishes.

"Sing with us, Aunt Amy!" Nora has a chocolate smear on one freckled cheek, which Amy supposes she should find adorable instead of off-putting.

They start in again: "Jingle bells, jingle bells..." and one of the boys - Austin? Dustin? - grabs a toy and shakes it quasi-rhythmically. Inside the kangaroo pocket of her brother's old Columbia sweatshirt, Amy's fist closes around another cylinder and gives it a reassuring shake.

_On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home._

It's been more than fifteen years and her mother still leaves the seat at the foot of the table empty. Amy should be touched, or something, at the poignancy and true love or whatever, but in truth she finds it sort of creepy. Her mother hasn't dated.

This year another seat is empty too; Derek's at the local hospital making a hero of himself as usual. Amy's not sure what annoys her more: the shrine to the father she barely remembers or the simpering look on her sister-in-law's face. Addison's ears fairly prick up at every sound outside that could signify Derek's return - then the hang-dog way she drops her eyes like a disappointed puppy.

"Did anyone else hear a car?" Amy asks suddenly, cruel enjoyment coursing through her veins like power at the way Addison's head snaps up.

"Is it Derek?"

Amy hides her laughter in spiked cider.

_On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home._

The first one's an accident. Cassie or Claire, overexcited by the cookies and the sugar-sick smell of Grandma's famous buttercream. A small elbow bumps a drinking glass and the shattering sound pierces Amy's already hyper-alert senses.

"Jesus!" she barks just as her sisters descend, cooing and clearing the mess and comforting whichever lookalike blonde was responsible.

"Amy, your language," her mother reproves gently. Then, to her granddaughter: "Don't worry, darling, there's nothing we can't fix."

That's a lie Amy can't bear for her niece to witness, so she shoves the wineglass nearest her - probably Addison's; her sister-in-law can't sit for two seconds without a globe of pinot in her hand like a fucking cliche - onto the floor.

Kathleen jumps. Cassieclaire burst into tears.

In the chaos, Derek's lowball Scotch tumbler hits the floor next.

"Amy!"

She shrugs. A small shard of glass is embedded in her palm.

Good.

_On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home._

She knows they're talking about her, but she doesn't care. When she was little she'd curl up on the floor outside the closed door to the family room - ha, if ever a name differed from the thing itself - while her four siblings laughed and watched television and conducted lives into which she was rarely invited. "When you're older," they said then, so she waited.

Now she's older, the smudged dark eyeliner of her teenaged years given way to the blank bare face that greeted her this morning in the bathroom mirror.

"I'm telling you, something's not right." Kathleen. The shrink. Of course. Nancy replies in a whisper.

"Amy, are you okay?" Addison, having tiptoed unnoticed behind her. Amy shudders at the intrusion. Addison's smile is wide with deceit, as if she actually cares. Her whole face is a lie, so Amy lies right back to her: "I'm fine."

_On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me five golden pills, four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home._

Finally, thankfully, there's silence. In semi-darkness, Amy sits Indian-style on the family room daybed. Too many siblings and grandkids, too few bedrooms - but she doesn't care as long as it's fucking quiet. She never had her own bedroom as a kid, it was Nancy's first. Even when Nancy married, even when she pushed out her first brat, and then her second. Nancy's trophies still lined the walls, Nancy's pictures studded the corkboard and when they came home for Christmas Nancy slid right back.

Amy rests her turned-up hands on her knees. Like meditation. Like yoga, Addison's stupid suggestion. She feels zen now, though. Little yellow tablets nest inside the creased warmth of her palm. As if she could drink them through her pores. She drinks them with pilfered vodka instead. One for Nancy. One each for Sharon, Kathleen and Derek. And the last one (as usual) for Amy.

_On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me six hands a-knocking, five golden pills, four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home. _

All she wants is to sleep. Instead two little pairs of fists pound the door at once - each magnified like a house of nightmare mirrors. "I'm sleeping," she croaks and miraculously, they leave. Thank you, Santa.

The next fist is bigger. "Amy. Amy, it's Nancy, the twins said you're still sleeping but-"

"Go away," Amy whispers into her pillow and for once Nancy hears her.

"Amy?" It's Addison's knock this time, overly sweet like the Christmas-loving sap she's proven herself to be. "Mom's made pancakes."

"She's not your mom," Amy says coolly, not even bothering to muffle her voice this time. Addison's sad footsteps trudge away.

"Amy, are you coming out?" Kathleen, shrinky and annoying as usual, even her knock sounding shrill.

Kathleen likes decisiveness, so Amy mumbles: "Maybe."

Mark's knock is loudest, forceful. "Amy-" but before he can finish she calls to him, loud and clear.

"Come in."

_On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me seven stolen seconds, six hands a-knocking, five golden pills, four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home. _

"Close the door behind you," that's the first thing she says when his recognizable bulk eases into the room.

For a minute he stands over her while she studies the faded pillowcase. Strawberry shortcake was emblazoned on the pillowcase, once, and the embarrassment is sharper than her comedown.

"You hungover?" He sits down beside her before she can roll over to make room, pinning the blankets to her body. For a thrilling moment she's immobilized.

"Mark-"

"Amy, what are you doing to yourself?"

She can't look at him.

"Amy?" He touches her face with one large hand. Her head is all she can move; she lets her cheek fall into his palm, warm and rough.

This moment of connection, why does it sting so badly? She wants to ask him but she's too busy counting the seconds. On seven, she pulls away before he can.

It hurts less that way.

_On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me eight cups of coffee, seven stolen seconds, six hands a-knocking, five golden pills, four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home. _

They watch her drink coffee like they've never seen it before. She downs mug after mug, hot and strong, and even her psychology-hating self observes with embarrassing clarity how obvious it is that she's trying to replace something. She feels empty, the comedown strong, and she tips Bailey's into her third mug, more into the fifth. The caffeine sharpens her dulled senses, the heat of the liquid slides into her belly with welcome fire. They look at her with judgment and she looks down at her scuffed slippers - or are they Nancy's? - and thinks that they are all hypocrites. They hide gifts with bright cheery wrapping paper, sweep shards of glass under the rug and leave a big empty space in their lives like Dad's going to come back, someday. Not that he'd recognize her if he did. She drains her eighth mug and sits quietly, hating him.

_On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me nine songs a-singing, eight cups of coffee, seven stolen seconds, six hands a-knocking, five golden pills, four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home. _

Like a cruel joke, they start singing again. Presents are unwrapped, shreds of bright paper and cheap toys scattered everywhere - as her mother always said, more is more, and she'd pile presents like a barrier against the cold. It's too warm in here now. Amy can't bear to look at the shining faces of her nieces and nephews, at their fingers sticky from cinnamon buns, so she studies the adults instead. Nancy, beaming at her children. Kathleen, looking like she's wondering what the kids would say on her couch. Sharon bundled close to her mother as usual, two peas in an unbearably cheerful pod. Derek is smiling warmly at the kids, looking more engaged than he has so far this holiday. Addison's hand is linked through his elbow; she's smiling at him instead of the children. They sing until Amy wants to scream - no, until she _does_ scream.

_On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me ten unfamiliar faces, nine songs a-singing, eight cups of coffee, seven stolen seconds, six hands a-knocking, five golden pills, four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home. _

She screams until she can't scream anymore, until the raw wetness in her throat tastes like vomit, and then like blood. She screams until the children scream too, until Kathleen won't have to wonder what will haunt their dreams and feed their therapy sessions into the next generation. She screams until her siblings' faces dissolves into ones she's never seen before, until the arms restraining are clothed in blue nylon. She screams until her family is gone. She screams until she can taste the copper penny bullet should have let her scream then and maybe they'd've taken her out too. Maybe everyone would have been better off. She screams until they force her into the empty coffin on wheels, speed with red Christmas lights glaring and it's cold and wet when they stick something sharp inside of her, shards of glass, and she shatters into a million pieces of silence.

_On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me eleven ultimatums, ten unfamiliar faces, nine songs a-singing, eight cups of coffee, seven stolen seconds, six hands a-knocking, five golden pills, four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home. _

One by one they come into her room, approach her bed like they're waiting for communion. There are so many of them.

Her mother cries. Of course. Derek and Addison come together like they're exchanging more vows, Addison's fingers tight in his sleeve. Or else, they all say. Or else we'll cut you off. Or else we're done. Nancy, Kathleen, Sharon. Three brothers-in-law, dragged behind their wives. Her oldest niece, Cassie, Kathleen behind her like a childminder. "You scared me, Aunt Amy," she whines piteously, and Amy thinks she's done her a favor. See a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck. Pennies. Shots.

Mark is last and he has only two words for her: "Get help," he says, husky-voiced. It's the tearstain on his jaw that does her in. For the first time since they tied her down, she cries. Her sobs sound like assent.

_On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, twelve steps to follow, eleven ultimatums, ten unfamiliar faces, nine songs a-singing, eight cups of coffee, seven stolen seconds, six hands a-knocking, five golden pills, four whispering siblings, three broken glasses, two empty seats, and an addict in her childhood home. _

It's not Christmas anymore the first time she sits on a hard gunmetal grey folding chair, hip still sore from the needles, throat still raw from everything. They want her to talk, but no one's ever really listened. So she stays silent and they tell her that's okay too. She tries to ignore the stories others tell, fists her hands under trembling thighs and pretends she doesn't see herself in their desperation, their loneliness. She's stronger than they are. She's only here because - but she can't answer that.

When it's over, she stuffs a stale doughnut in her mouth, chases it with apple juice. Pretends it's cider. Pretends it's spiked. When a tear slides down her jaw, she pretends the fingers brushing it away are his. She hiccups a little and powdered sugar flecks her fingers. She licks it away slowly, tasting secrets. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow she'll talk.


	16. Peaches

_Something a little different. Summer's prompt: Addison/Charlotte in New York, before Mark. Contains adult themes._

* * *

><p><strong>Peaches<strong>

"It's not a real thing." His tone is absolutely confident, as always, because it's Mark. And Mark is always certain he's right.

"Tell that to the journals. This doctor is very highly regarded," Addison counters tiredly.

"A sexologist? Is that even a- Derek, you agree with me, don't you? It's not a real title!"

Derek just shrugs, flipping a page on his clipboard and half-turning away.

"Come on, Addie, it's not an actual specialty," Mark continues witheringly. "Just some new age crap no different from sticking needles in someone and calling it medicine. I mean - a _sexologist_?"

Addison sighs. "Yes, Mark. A sexologist. She's extremely well respected-" at Mark's expression she rolls her eyes. "And yes, she's a woman, and you need to try to keep your hands off her long enough to let her help my patient."

He raises the aforementioned hands in mock offense. "Fine. I'll look, but I won't touch. Sexology sounds too clinical for my tastes, anyway."

He changes his tune, of course, when he sees her.

"Dr. Charlotte King," is all she says, extending an impossibly small hand, and Addison can see the exact moment Mark's brain shuts down and lower-situated organs take over.

"Hey," he smirks, throaty and low and Addison steps between them before Mark can send yet another specialist huffily packing.

"Thank you so much for flying out here, Dr. King," she interrupts quickly. "I've read about your work and I really think this patient could benefit from some of your newer techniques."

Dr. King gives her an appraising sort of glance that for some reason burns a bit as it slides from the top of her carefully coiffed head to the toes of her Prada maryjanes. She's not sure when the last time it was someone looked at her quite that thoroughly.

"Call me Charlotte," she says, pink lips pursing and then it's Addison's brain that's shutting down.

So she calls her Charlotte.

"Charlotte, I really don't think -"

"So don't think."

"But this isn't - I don't-"

"From where I'm standing," she drawls in that _accent _that's almost too much to be real, "it seems like you do."

That's a fair point, since Addison's backed against the wall of her office, files scattered and forgotten, the flick of a delicate wrist sending her toes curling inside her stiff satin pumps. It's not really happening, it can't be, because it's just a consult and the shades are barely half drawn and it's wet silk and clenching muscles and despite her size Charlotte is strong, strong enough to hold her up as her jellied legs tremble and she slowly comes back to herself.

They haven't even kissed.

"I should - I should go home," Addison gasps when she can breathe again, flushed damp skin moving rapidly at the top of her blouse as she pants.

"Or you could come with me," Charlotte suggests. "New in town, big empty room and all of that."

"No, I - I should-"

"When's the last time someone touched you? Really touched you?" And Charlotte looks hard at her, looks at her like she can actually see her.

"I don't really-"

But she does.

Splayed on an endless hotel bed, bits of clothing scattered everywhere, she decides that perhaps she did all along. She closes her eyes, writhing before she can help herself. Pretends it's just another consult. Charlotte's too small to hold onto, too fast, as she moves over her, all tiny bones and the whisper of silky hair. She wants to touch her, tries to but it's like trying to capture a lightning bug, the ones she used to chase all summer when she was small. Too quick, too bright for capture and _oh. _She's fastening that pert mouth on quivering flesh and it really is like those summer nights on the Cape because there are flashes of lights and darkness and Charlotte smells sweet like dessert and the fireworks are too bright to open her eyes and no touching never touching because _careful kitten, you'll burn yourself _and -

She opens her eyes slowly. Blue eyes stare back at her.

Not her husband's.

"Did you actually pass out?" Charlotte is shaking her head, looking somewhere between rueful and pleased with herself. "Shepherd, I thought you'd have more stamina than that."

"You're a sexologist. Unfair - unfair advantage," she pants.

They still haven't kissed. Addison swallows hard, her throat raw. Charlotte, she thinks, would taste sweet.

Charlotte shrugs. "So level the playing field." Her voice is slow and slippery. She could listen to it all night. "Show me what you've got.

She tastes sweet, just like Addison had guessed. Like peaches. Like blood oranges when she bites.

"Jesus! You're going to make it hard to hide this," Addison yanks back, only exposing more of her throat and Charlotte just grins, all smirk and honeyed voice.

"Who says I want to hide this?"

This time, Mark was wrong.

It _is _a real thing.


	17. Expectations

**If I recall correctly, the prompt was an Amelia A/U where Derek, too, died in the robbery. Adult themes. **

* * *

><p><em>Expectation<em>

* * *

><p>This is her plan: if someone asks her about it, if they think it's rebellion, she'll just laugh. You see, if no one has any expectations of you, doing anything at all can be a rebellion.<p>

She posts the application, checks the mailbox twice. Goosebumps rise on the miles between trench and boots. She lights a cigarette and considers throwing it down the chute next. Two fingers slide over her wrist, a ritual of practice as much as comfort. It's soft, steady and fast.

Alive.

What did she expect?

If she's honest, as little as they expected. Maybe nothing. Accidental baby of an already overfull family. Surprise survivor of the shooting that killed her father. She wasn't supposed to make it - her brother didn't. She wasn't supposed to be conceived. Or born. Revived. Resuscitated.

Rehabilitated.

She made top marks in chemistry because no one expects it. Read every word in English literature but spent class on the bleachers. Left them to guess whether she's an underachiever or an overachiever.

Now she wraps a scarf tight, tighter until she coughs. Purple-black aching sky, bruising rainclouds. She tips her chin up with gratitude when the drops lick her cheeks. Walks home slow and invisible. The house is a wound, still gaping in places where her father was, where her brother could have been. Overrun with squawking sisters.

But he still comes around, after the shooting. The house expands to fit him, the maleness of his presence, where it had shrunk around the two absent inhabitants. She thinks he'll lose interest, eventually. He doesn't. She considers asking him, but then she catches Nancy's heavy-lidded eyes, the lazy way her mouth quirks on one side and she knows.

Her sisters are tall and willowy, all of them, sloping shoulders and long reedy limbs. Amy is short and squared off - a tree stump. The sum of the parts of what's left when everything else stops growing. When everyone leaves. Her feet, though, her feet are a size nine, awkwardly at odds with her small stature. As if some unflappable corner of her genetic makeup didn't get the message, retained the shadow of the woman she could have been.

He comes back from medical school for Thanksgiving and brings a girl with him, auburn-haired and angular. They talk across her head and she hates being short, hates it with a passion. Her thumb skims the freckles on the back of her other hand, slide under her wrist, almost unconscious. Her pulse flutters once, twice. Conscious.

He's the only one who seems to have plans. Maybe not expectations, but plans. He says _could_ when no one else does.

Now his fingers touch hers. They're warm and thick. _Like this_, he says, moving her thumb, and something catches in her throat.

_Could_, he says. You could be a surgeon.

Amy eyes the redhead. She watches the two of them at the sink, washing dishes. Rinse, dry, repeat. He bumps her hip with his. Soap suds float toward the window.

Amy looks down, measures the height of her own hip against theirs. Slightly, hating herself for it, she inclines one hip in the air. Toward nothing, touching nothing.

Here is what she looks at when sleep taunts her: his baseball trophies, still lining her shelf. Cheap gold-colored tin, caught mid-movement. Here an arm arcing to catch a ball, here a leg drawn back for momentum. It seems too easy to compare her brother's life to these sun-dusted statuettes, a metaphor as cheap as the things themselves. That it's a cliche doesn't make it less apt, though. She sucks a cloud into her lungs, watches the light play off the tiny extended fingers, reaching in the air. Grasping at nothing.

_If he had lived,_ she said once.

It's a game she can't play.

They stop by at Christmas. She squints as if his sandy hair will darken and he'll really be one of them. They're engaged now. She shows off her ring. He pretends to be bashful. There are men in the house now. Brothers-in-law. Babies. She watches everyone else's life move forward, circling. Lapping her. They grow while she stays small, protecting what's left.

He smiles at her over pumpkin pie. Next year, plain gold rings. She wraps her arms around her legs. Why is she still here, on this chair, in this house? Is she even real? She runs a hand down her arm, the bony ridge of her elbow. There's fine dark down on her skin. She didn't die, in the store. She closes her eyes around a mouthful of cinnamon tea, feeling the weight of her brother pressing her into the rough oak floor. The way he got heavier as the life seeped out of him. They found the two of them tangled up together. _We thought you were dead too,_ Kathleen told her once, matter-of-factly.

_Maybe I was._

The first time, she thought she was dying. The weight of him on top of her, the gasping and the spurt of warm liquid, the flood of it inside her, headboard rough beneath her hands like the floor of the shop. Last time she crawled free, a survivor. This time she lies pinned to the mattress, a cramp in her toes surging past her so hard she almost misses it.

_Am I dead?_ She wants to ask.

When no one expects anything of you, no one can be surprised.

This is what she wears: a white coat. Her name in curling embroidered script. This is what she carries: a black leather bag, wide with the tools she can use to save a life. A small pad embossed with her name. This is what she swallows: her words. The truth. A handful of small blue tablets.

Lots of doctors do it. Lots of people. She's in control. No one will get hurt.

Addison finds her. Addie, that's what she said to call her. Years ago. They are family, of a sort; in spite of the things, maybe that is what they are. The way her mother collects people, overgrown teenagers orbiting her like planets. Love Mark enough and maybe Derek would come back.

"Want one?" Amy uncurls her palm and Addie frowns.

Amy doesn't mind because that warm floaty feeling is already starting. Like sinking into a warm bath. A gush of warm liquid on her, pumping onto her. The last jerks of a body as the life escapes it. Addison is looking at her. Amy thinks about what to say. She considers asking her if she realizes that sex and death are the same, that Amy can't stop because every time she dies is one time closer to living. That nothing kills as swiftly as survival.

"Amy, are you okay?"

Addison's fingers brush over her forehead. Cool and tapering, surgeon's hands. Amy winds her fingers through them. Addison's hair is brushing her cheek as she leans over her, the strands soft with hard-bristle ends, like a paintbrush. It's late and it's quiet and there's a heartbeat between her thighs, a pulse beating hard. Strong doctor's fingers sliding inside her. They touch her like they're looking for something. The pills are chalk in her mouth and she chokes on someone else's tongue. She grabs aching handfuls of softness, claws her way toward the surface until she can breathe again.

Addison is crying.

She tells them all later, at dessert, that she's pregnant. She rests a hand on her belly, the swell that hasn't even announced itself. Mark beams. Amy's mother has tears in her eyes. Survival of the fittest just means living long enough to reproduce. You can die then and it doesn't even matter. You've left your mark on the world already.

Amy has eight nieces. She has four nephews.

She is still sitting in that chair.

When no one expects anything of you, no one can be betrayed.

She's recovered. She can write her own prescriptions again now. He doesn't have to talk to her still - he's not her brother. But he does. He shows up at holidays. With a baby, then two.

_Could, _he says. We have to be careful. She could get pregnant. Amy purses her lips. She thinks about how she feels underneath him. Like a starfish. Like a pancake. Like a blanket spread out on the grass; he's the ants and she's the picnic and every cliche she's never fought as he feasts on her. She doesn't love him. She tells him that, to make it easier for him to leave. He has to leave, so she can be whole. And none of it matters because she's not the one he loved anyway.

_If he had lived..._

She lifts one of his children into her arms, and then the other. Can you memorize a person?

When no one expects anything of you, starting over is the same as carrying on.

She picks the west coast for distance, a surf town even though she hates the sun. Maybe she can still surprise herself. She rents a furnished cottage with stripped wood floors and white wicker and salt in the air, in her lungs. Her eyes.

"Oh," the realtor mouths, shaking her hand slowly. Her lip curls with something.

Amy lets her gaze fall on the leather doctor's bag she carried four thousand miles. There's a misshapen bit poking out near the zipper. It could be anything, a pen or a syringe, but it's not: it's the curl of a tiny metal-plated fist, fingers half open and waiting.

The realtor is still staring at her. "I ... didn't realize you were expecting," she murmurs finally.

The expanse of flesh shifts under Amy's palm. "I'm not," she says coolly.

She's not expecting anything.


	18. All Tangled Up

_An FMS prompt. F, to be specific. Who else would prompt Charlotte/Mark/Addison backstory-on-top-of-backstory? From this summer's wild prompting sessions, but I felt like posting now because (don't laugh, S) - I kind of like this one. Starts sometime in Season 3 of Grey's. Adult themes._

* * *

><p><strong>All Tangled Up<strong>

* * *

><p>Everyone at Seattle Grace is talking about the little blond sex doctor, which is good because for five minutes they're not talking about her. They're not talking about her mascara-streaked face or her misty-eyed husband or the skinny little intern he's still chasing. And they're definitely not talking about Mark, who follows her into one exam room after the other, demanding some kind of penance for what she wrought in New York.<p>

She gives it to him, of course. Wherever and whenever, just like always. It's just slightly more dignified to pretend it's his idea, isn't it?

She cries sometimes, after (or during, or before), and he doesn't ignore her like she wants him to, he makes a fuss of her and she can't stand all that, petting and cooing and cradling and what she actually needs is just to be driven hard into the sprawling Archfield mattress until she can't feel anything at all.

She gets what she needs, but not from him; it's tiny nimble fingers and a pert little pink tongue and laughing long-lashed eyes.

Mark's there, of course, he's always there, and she cracks a few jokes about how he's never been satisfied with just one woman, but they don't sound as convincing when she's choking back tears. When he tries to hold her Charlotte wraps a bright pink manicure as far around his bicep as it will go and yanks him back. Addison watches him fuck Charlotte and the tears dry up. She pretends she's watching her life from the outside.

Charlotte is quick, smaller and lighter than she is and she takes advantage of her long legs to ensnare the other woman, capture her at the foot of the bed and bring her back. Charlotte laughs; later, when Addison finally finds her footing, she screams. Mark is buried deep inside her again when the sun rises over the blond head suckling at her shoulders, the inside of her wrists.

They don't sleep.

Charlotte joins her in the gym late the next morning, scans Addison with tired eyes under fringed lashes. She's wearing tiny little laughable coordinates, brightly-colored, and Addison wants to ridicule her - doesn't she know it's Seattle? - but remembers that her own all-black ensemble is more Madison Avenue than grunge.

_Last night was a relief,_ Charlotte says.

Addison waits for clarification - a relief because of the release? As it was for her? Or something else?

_I was afraid he'd get all weepy again. Like last time._

_Last time? _Addison freezes with one leg higher than the other, unsteady.

_In New York. What, about seven, eight months ago now? He was a hot piece, thought he'd be a good lay - I was only out there for a day, you know how it is. I get him to my room and what does he do but start crying into his scotch over some woman that fucked him over. _

Addison lifts one leg, then the other. Mechanical. Movement. Maybe if she burns enough calories she'll disappear altogether.

_Not like I care if he had a woman at home. That's not my business, you know? It was that he was still so tangled up with her he could barely get it up. I don't have time for that._

She stops talking then, maybe because of the sounds coming from Addison. She cries into a Stairmaster instead of a scotch this time and Charlotte, to her credit, ignores every last undignified snort.

She doesn't say goodbye. She leaves a pair of impossibly tiny pink silk panties at the foot of Addison's bed - under the pillow would have been too much, but somehow this works - and disappears back to wherever she came from.

When Mark knocks that night she opens the door with the latch still hooked.

_We wouldn't have made it, in New York,_ she whispers to the visible inch of unshaven cheek. One blue-grey eye finds hers.

_Whatever you need to believe,_ he says, and she closes the door in his face.

Just long enough to open it again, and then she shoves him toward the bed, angles herself so she's half-dangling off and clutches a cool scrap of silk in one clenched fist as he thrusts his way back into her life. It's different, though.

Charlotte is gone, but the bed still smells like her.

When they meet again it's under a glaring California sun and Addison is painfully grateful that Charlotte takes her cue and pretends it's the first time. That nothing that came before ever happened at all.

Addison pretends too, pretends so hard it almost feels true.

That's almost like feeling better.

* * *

><p><em>Thoughts?<em>


	19. Waves

_Discovered it lurking on my hard drive. I'm going to guess it was F's long-ago request. Amelia, Sam, the addiction arc. _

* * *

><p>She knew he'd come. His headlights sweep over her; she closes her eyes a second too late to avoid the burn. She slides unsteadily into smooth leather. His car's as sleek and unhurried as he is; she's slumped and slippery, vodka on her tongue and no effort to make excuses. There are things she doesn't know: who bought the last few drinks, the one that pushed her closer to the cliff, the one that heaved her over its edge. Where she slept last night. Why she called him.<p>

"You need to stop." He shakes his head. "Amelia, you need help."

He'll drive her home and Addison will be sleeping and they'll stand at the skinny strip of beach where the two houses join. The waves will curl like a question mark and she'll wait for his answer.

"Amelia." He's watching the road, his tone firm. Headlights dance across his clenched fingers. "You can't keep doing this. Addison would be horrified."

"Is that why we're not telling her?" She studies his jawline; a muscle jumps near his cheek. He doesn't look at her.

"She doesn't need any more stress right now."

"That's rich, coming from you."

"You want to walk home?" There's no increase in volume, but his voice is harder.

She sinks lower in her seat. She used to slip her shoes off, prop bare feet on the dashboard. It seems like a long time ago. Everything seems like a long time ago.

He parks soundlessly and one large palm covers hers when she reaches for the door handle.

"You can sleep it off at my place."

She doesn't answer; it wasn't a question. She wobbles on stack-heeled boots but doesn't reach for his arm.

Inside his house is stark and masculine and the alcohol blurs the edges of the color scheme: browns and more browns, broken up with beige. Or maybe it's taupe. Addison would know, but now's not the time to think about what Addison knows because he's looking at her with hooded eyes, darker than dark.

She takes a step closer, close enough to see the pores by his nose, the fine lines - very faint - next to his eyes. _Smile wrinkles. _He's not smiling now. She can smell him: aftershave, which normally nauseates her. Something masculine and showered, the sort of product she'd laugh at in a store. The whole house is like a set anyway, stocked by someone else: a bachelor pad. If Addison's left her mark anywhere she can't see it: she must have glided through without an impression anywhere. Amelia doesn't travel like that. She leaves marks. Scars. Burns. Sam's breath hitches and she feels the exhalation on her face, warm and stale. He was asleep when she called.

He's awake now, alive under her hand as she closes the last inches between them.

As it turns out, all forbidden fruit tastes the same. She slips her tongue over his and her mouth is filled with smoke: the first cigarette pilfered from Nancy's purse. Silk straps slide down shoulders and she feels the rasp of cheap lace: the scraps of lingerie she'd nick from Kathleen's dresser drawers. Her shoulders hit the mattress first, then her skull, and the press of him between her thighs makes her giddy for a slick second. He's the banana seat on a stolen bicycle and she's pumping her legs fast - they're chasing her and they'll catch her but it doesn't matter because in this instant she's ahead.

In this moment she's flying.

Then her hands skim the breadth of his back and his warm skin is someone else's - everyone else's.

When he moves above her, within her, she tips her head back into an expensive down pillow and blames the feathers for the tightening in her throat. He's muttering something - cursing or praying, sex or a deity, she's not sure. He pushes into her again, harder, and for the first time she wishes she were sober so she could feel the pain.

_God, Amelia, you're so -_

_I'm so what? _

Silence sounds like the sweating slap of skin on skin.

_God, Amelia._

Cursing or praying and - _What? Just say it!_

But she's filled to bursting now. She's empty. It's all the same.

"This can never happen again" - he sounds so solemn she almost laughs. He's an altar boy, this one - science club, married the first girl who ever made him scream. Of course he doesn't know that the only way to guarantee it will happen again

_and again and again and again _

is to make a promise.

What can she say? _You're hot when you're kidding yourself. _

"It won't," she says.

It does. Of course it does.

Addison stops her in the kitchen on a sunny morning, puts a hand, cool and steady, over Amelia's shaking one.

"Does Sam seem quiet to you, lately?" she asks. "Like something's bothering him?" Addison's voice is gently grating, the affection in her face making her look older.

Amelia swallows burnt tasting coffee and leans against the counter, skirt riding up just enough to present the edge of a fading bruise at her thigh. "I'm sure he'd tell you if it were something that mattered."


	20. What if I Had Been the One

"What if I had been the one to ask you out first? In medical school?"

She shakes her head. "You weren't."

"But what if I had been?" he persists.

"It's not worth thinking about." Addison shivers slightly in the breeze; the sun set a few hours ago over the ocean and a chill permeates the salt air. "I introduced you to Naomi, remember?"

"I remember."

"And you married her and you had all those happy years together."

"They weren't all happy."

"A lot of them were happy," she prods gently. She scans her old friend's face. He looks older - she does too, she knows - and sadder. She's sad too, because of this conversation and everything else in her life that feels just beyond her grasp. So she goes on: "And you had a daughter together."

"I love her," he says quickly. "Addison, you know I love my daughter."

"I'm not questioning that. She's my goddaughter, after all." She smiles. "I just think there's nothing to gain from this - conversation. That was then, and this is now."

"Right. This is now. We're here now. Addison-"

"No."

She stands up and starts to walk toward the house, then turns back. He's still looking out at the water. From the back he could still be her medical school classmate, still that skinny, gawky guy who asked her to dinner while safety goggle marks still marred his skin.

Okay, so she's thought about it. Once or twice, over the years, like when her husband stopped paying attention to her. Like when she turned to his best friend. Like when _her _best friend ordered her not to even _think _about dating her ex-husband. But that long ago night in the med school library, when he'd just missed her: what if he had caught her first? What would she have said?

It's late enough and she's just enough wine gone that honesty feels right.

"I, uh, I think I would have said yes."

He looks up, eyes bright. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"And we would've gotten married. It would have been _our _house, _our _life and -"

"And our cheating, and our divorce."

"That wouldn't have happened to us."

"You don't think so?" She sits down next to him again, wraps the afghan around her legs.

"No, I think we - I really do think we could have made it. We would have been _that couple._"

"You and me."

"You and me," he repeats.

She finds herself smiling sadly. It's all well and good, twenty years later, to look back like this. But it doesn't really accomplish anything, does it? They're still pushing middle age, still past their prime. Their pasts are still littered with cheating and heartbreak and failed marriages. He has a teenager; she still doesn't have a child. What good is it to look back twenty years?

Except she still sort of wonders what would have happened if he'd asked her out first.

"I wish he hadn't gotten to you first," he says quietly.

She's not willing to concede, just pulls her own legs up and hugs them. What does it matter? They'll never be able to be a real couple now, not with him divorced from her best friend. And she can't lose Naomi.

No, they have no future, but just for a minute, she lets herself wonder what it would have been like.

To be _that couple. _

To have him lifting her white veil, carrying over the threshold of the brownstone, jumping waves with her in the Hamptons, popping champagne at the opening of her practice. Maybe if he'd been the one she married, she would have been ready to have a child instead of making excuses all these years. It would be _her_ daughter asking for homework help and curfew extensions. She imagines what it would have been like if he stayed in New York. He and Mark would have still been close friends, but that would have been different too. He wouldn't have ignored her, wouldn't have buried himself in his work until Mark was the only one noticing how sad she was. How lonely.

They would have been stronger together, maybe, supporting each other instead of drifting apart. No pettiness or professional jealousy. He's solicitous of her now, he's been her closest friend in this strange sunny state. Imagine what it would have been like to be married to him instead. To have had that kind of support back in New York.

She indulges the fantasy for another minute, saying their names - just in her head - just swirling them thoughtfully to herself like a sip of good wine:

_Addison and Derek. _

"Addison, if I had-"

"Derek," she says softly. "I'm going inside. It's enough. Sam asked me out first. And I said yes. You were late to the library that night for study group-"

"I was practicing!"

"You were too late."

"Maybe not."

"No," she says firmly, and _Addison and Derek _dies in her mouth as surely as it was first uttered. "You were too late. I'm going inside, Derek."

"We could have been great," he calls after her retreating back, and she just walks inside, closes the door.

Derek will have to find his own way home.

* * *

><p><em>This just popped into my head, along with a whole alternate universe for them. Considering exploringexpanding, but felt I needed to get this down first. Thoughts? _


End file.
